PASSAGE

Creativity operates in peaks and troughs and plateaus. Rising and falling like the tide and most often (and frustratingly) we’ve no control over how and when it appears.

Then sometimes there’s a flood.

I’ve been doing a balancing act across so many ideas and new techniques for almost a year now that there simply are not enough hoursin my day to make the art that needs to be made. Perhaps I’ll get there in the end.

I almost blew up my computer in a bid to combine complex topographical data and city street maps into new patterns (it turns out that even a top of the line iMac has it’s limits on file size). I’ve spent countless hours reinterpreting ancient Minakari techniques using contemporary materials such as mylar and acrylic medium after visiting the V&A Museum in London and being completely fascinated by their Middle East and South Asia exhibits. I spent time at Abu Dhabi’s first maker-space (Techshop; it’s flipping awesome) developing some incredibly complex cut paper pieces with their laser machines. And then there’s the crash course in visual software (I happen to know a software engineer who has a vast reservoir of patience for teaching and dealing with a temperamental artist) that I’ve been on for months now that’s taking detail and complexity in my artwork a level previously unimaginable.

In short, I’ve been maturing as an artist and in my artistic practice through sweat, tears and hard work.The resulting body of work is complex, it’s varied and it was very difficult to make.

The underpinning inspiration is an ongoing obsession with highly detailed pattern and symmetry; lines, curves and shapes created through manipulation of data with a heavy sprinkling of improvisation and chance. To put that into context, I would work on developing a pattern based on pieces of data and then mess around with it, pushing the level of detail further and further until the computer crashed - often with spectacular results.